Gaza’s Rafah crossing to reopen, allowing Palestinians to return from Egypt

The Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt is set to reopen on Monday, the Palestinian embassy in Egypt says.

The move, announced on Saturday, comes a week after a US-brokered ceasefire and hostage deal was agreed between Israel and Hamas.

The crossing, which has been largely closed since May 2024, will allow Palestinians residing in Egypt to return to Gaza, the embassy said.

However, the announcement did not specify whether humanitarian aid would also be permitted to pass through.

Since the US-brokered halt to two years of devastating war, some 560 metric tons of food have entered the Gaza Strip per day on average.

This figure, according to the UN World Food Programme, is still well below the scale of need.

The crossing was shut to aid after Israeli forces seized the Gaza side in May 2024, but was briefly reopened in early 2025 during a short-lived ceasefire.

After two years of bombardment and blockade, the need for food, medicine, shelter and other aid in Gaza is extreme. In March, Israel launched an 11-week blockade of all aid into Gaza, causing food stockpiles to dwindle and prices to shoot up.

In August, a global hunger monitor declared that famine was unfolding in Gaza City in the enclave's north.

Israel dismissed the findings as false and biased.

Gaza's health authorities say that more than 400 people have died from malnutrition-related causes. Israel says that the figures are exaggerated and that many of the deaths were attributable to other causes.

Israel announced in late July that it was expanding measures to let more aid into Gaza.

However, Gaza's side of the Rafah crossing remained closed, meaning shipments were routed through the Israeli crossing of Kerem Shalom, about three kilometres (two miles) to the south.

Aid workers and truck drivers have complained that they faced a host of obstacles at Kerem Shalom, ranging from rejections for minor packing and paperwork issues to short hours at the Israeli crossing, meaning they could only bring in a fraction of the aid that was needed.

Israel denies that it has limited aid into the enclave.